A Visit to a Single-Stream Recycling Facility

I had the pleasure of visiting a local single-stream material recovery center earlier this week. Here are some photos! Keep in mind this is ONE DAY’s worth of waste. The facility is cleared out every day.

From EPA (2011) – Total municipal solid waste generation by material

The biggest waste stream is paper. What I saw were magazines, ads, inserts, fliers, etc. Most of this stuff people don’t even look at and goes right to the trash, then recycled into new ads/inserts, etc.

Here’s some guys sorting through a line. They are removing any plastic items from the paper stream

More guys sorting through a paper line

Aluminum cans are one of the most highly recyclable materials. They are removed with an air blower into a separate stream.

Another shot of the aluminum stream

The yard where construction waste goes. There’s a line of about 10 guys in the elevated tent back there sorting through it. The wood generally gets mulched and sold as landscaping material.

Glass is separated and broken down into chips. The paper pile is any ‘contamination’ that is included in the glass (just any paper that slipped through).

Fresh load coming in.

This is the ‘trash’ section. None of this will be sorted – just goes straight to landfill.

Another pile of ‘trash’. I see lots of recyclables in there – this is due to people not separating the recyclables from the actual trash.

While single stream recycling IS better and results in more materials being recycled, you have to know how to do it properly. Even if your community offers single stream recycling, they may not be clear on what that means.

You should still have one trash can for ALL recyclables (paper, plastic, glass), one can for FOOD WASTE/COMPOST, and one can for anything else that is not food waste and not recyclable (this should not be much). Single stream recycling means single stream for your recyclables only, not all your waste!